The invention relates generally to the field of electronic monitoring and supervision in the criminal justice field. More specifically, embodiments of the invention relate to systems and methods for computerized management of offenders being supervised by criminal justice agencies and their staff.
As the use of probation and other community supervision programs has grown over the past twenty years (to over 6,000,000 adults and juveniles in 2005), the pressure on increasing caseloads and officer efficiency has likewise increased. Combined with the recent phenomenon of the tightening of federal, state and local tax budgets, criminal justice agencies are faced with increasing quantity and complexity of caseloads with the same or lesser budgets. There is a call for best practices, a greater use of automation, and an intelligent program design that is proven effective to solve the variety of community supervision needs.
In many countries, and particularly the United States of America, it is well known that the criminal justice system makes great use of probation, parole and pretrial release to ease overcrowding of jails, for alternative sentencing, for specialized treatment programs, and other purposes that require a human services involvement to address criminal behavior that does not or no longer requires incarceration. The courts, local, state and federal, and probation departments place individuals on special forms of community supervision that require electronic supervision—providing a measure of confidence and security that these offenders are being more closely watched and supervised than would be possible by human means alone.
The use of electronic monitoring, or electronic supervision, has been widely used in the industry for well over fifteen years. Electronic monitoring has been dominated by the use of radio frequency bracelet monitoring, and more recently global positioning satellite (GPS) monitoring—both requiring the use of wearable devices that cannot be removed from the body of the offender during their electronic supervision period. Additionally, these forms of hardware-based monitoring systems are prone to false alerts, logistical issues, break/fix issues associated with the wearable devices, and with a high total cost of ownership.
The variety of cases and offender behavior management techniques are numerous. An example of a mode of community supervision is intensive supervision. For this mode, caseloads per officer are between 15 and 30 cases, and elements include active probation officer intervention, job skills enhancement, education, electronic monitoring, drug and alcohol testing, and temporary incarceration. The officer applies any or all of these elements based on the needs of the individual case. Another example of a mode of community supervision is treatment oriented. For this mode, caseloads per officer are 20-40, and elements include active case manager intervention, treatment, therapy, drug and alcohol testing, electronic supervision and temporary incarceration. The officer applies any or all of these elements based on the needs of the individual case. Another example of a mode of community supervision is (standard) probation. For this mode, caseloads range from 30-80 for juvenile offenders and from 40-120 for adult offenders, and elements include periodic probation officer interaction, education, electronic monitoring or supervision, drug and alcohol testing, and temporary incarceration. The officer applies any or all of these elements based on the needs of the individual case. Another example of a mode of community supervision is administrative probation. For this mode, caseloads per officer can range from 150 to 300, and elements include infrequent officer contact, maintaining a record of home address, employment and other important probation conditions (such as non use of drugs, alcohol, etc.). In any court system, state or local probation system, these modes and others are customized to the local laws, the history and the culture of the judicial system, and the needs and wants of the community.
The needs of an individual case—to control their substance abuse, their behaviors that lead to criminality, their emotional instability, their cognitive skills deficits, their non-compliant behavior while on probation, and/or their likelihood or potential to reoffend are all case characteristics that require a case manager/probation officer to intelligently apply a variety of case management tools. Electronic supervision is useful alone or in conjunction with many of these case conditions.
An electronic supervision program restricts movement during certain hours of the days of the week, and the allowable locations at which an offender may be. For example, a curfew program might require an offender to be at home between 8 pm and 7 am every day. A house arrest program might require being home 7 days by 24 hours a day except for work schedule. A truancy program might require that a juvenile offender be at school every day.
When an offender is placed on electronic supervision, the compliance or non-compliance to the terms of electronic supervision vary based on history of the probation staff and court's response to non-compliance, on the experience a case has with authority figures, on the amount of positive or negative consequences for non-compliance (such as a long term jail stay, removal from a diversion program, etc.). However, since caseloads can be overwhelming for many officers, the ability to respond in a timely fashion is challenging to nearly impossible on a consistent basis. Thus the effectiveness of electronic supervision, unless closely managed with officers having small caseloads, is often called into question by criminal justice practitioners.
In recent years, the criminal justice field has developed and refined many initiatives in the field of best practices surrounding the concept generically called graduated sanctions/progressive response. In these initiatives and studies, agencies have developed protocols and program designs that use a series of tools (as mentioned herein) that aim to provide timely and measured consequences to non-compliant behavior, and in some cases to provide meaningful incentives for compliance. To date, the use of electronic supervision is considered simply as one of many tools along a wide continuum of case management choices. The deployment of any graduated sanction/progressive response system has been done via paper-based documentation, officer training, and recordkeeping information systems.